This is not a black PR thread. I'm just wondering if Google is not that good. I have an evidence: Go to http://www.joomlashine.com/. Seems to be a pretty website selling some services for Joomla. It's ok, but... how can a template club with only 4 templates for sale have PR 8? RocketTheme - pure masters of template business has PR 8. So I started searching... I went to yahho.com and typed 'link:http://www.joomlashine.com/' there. Lots of inbound links so it seemed obvious that their PR amount is that huge. But... try clicking any website linking to them. I.e. http://www.freemoviescinema.com/ - nice website WITHOUT outgoing link to JoomlaShine. Now check its' source code (Ctrl+U) and try to find a link containing joomlashine.com (Ctrl+F). Oh! Here it is - but what is that strange <div class="hd">? Seems like a hidden text, isn't it? Just check that 'display:none;' attribute using Firebug or something else. And the more websites linking to JoomlaShine you check, the more obvious comes that JoomlShine.com uses blackhat SEO methods. That is no good. And the question is - Why the hell a website using blackhat methods of SEO is #5 in SERP for 'joomla templates' query? Shouldn't it be banned by Google? Shouldn't its' PR be 0 unless they use whitehat methods only? I'm not trying to be rude. Probably I'm missing something. Waiting for your comments. P.S. Hey, Mr. Cutts, would you post a reply here, please?
True, go and report that site here (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en) if you can't live with this and don't cry here about what a failure google is.
Very sneaky indeed. Google will find them eventually and kick them out. However dont be a snitch to Google. I personally hate to be a snitch unless it is directly hurting my business. Even then I try my level best to find alternates.
Hey, I'm not crying or snitching. I just wanted to know how could this happen - a website using blackhat methods is that popular within Google. And of course I'm not going to go and report anything - I will just keep watching for how long would this continue. If website won't be kicked out, I will think about implementing some blackhat methods. Seems like it is possible to trick Google. It doesn't seem that powerful and ruthless for me any more. And some words said by Matt Cutts seems hypocritical a bit from now. BTW, this website hurts my business I guess But am not going to squeal on them. It's enough for me that I'm proud of making such a goddamn investigation lol.
Good that you don't want to be a snitch. This guy got a PR 8 and that by no mean is a small feat. If one of his site gets banned he will come out with something else. I know one of the guy who plays in similar territories and makes in good six figures monthly. It is almost impossible to compete with him. He comes out with so many weired ideas spends thousands of Ks just like that and when he enters into any niche he just tears it apart.
Its a kind of blackhat but Google counts this link too for calculating pagerank. Maybe Google penalize this website but pagerank can be independent from penalizing by Google Be sure about it. As i have said a lot, Pagerank is not everything
Dammit! joomlashine.com is still in top 10. Screw all those white hat tactics, black hat SEO rocks. And Google really failed.
that is correct. 'black hat' simply means something that Google would prefer you not to do because right now, they can't automatically catch it. Once Google CAN automatically catch it, it ceases to be 'black hat' and becomes 'dumb'.
Just imaging how long will it take search engines to learn catching all those 'dirty' methods automatically. I thought hidden links are as obvious for bots as they're for me, but I was wrong. Guys using 'black hat' methods are not penalized for almost three months by now. However, it is always dangerous to use those methods because you will get penalized someday as you mentioned before. I just wish that day will come soon.
You say that because some sites linking to joomlashine are hiding those links, joomlashine should be penalized for blackhat practices??? How about if I link to your site and hide the links, should you be penalized? I don't know if joomlashine is or is not doing anything wrong. But you'll never be penalized for something that another site does to you. (well almost never) One more thing, PR does not depend on how many templates a site has for sale. If they sell only 4 and have lots of IBLs, that's all that matters.
I have to admit that you are right. You might be penalized for adding hidden links on your website but not vice versa. That is unfair but life isn't fair at all =) I didn't mean to say that PR depends on the number of goods you sell. It is too obvious that PR doesn't depend on it.
Yes, that is very shady indeed. Many web template site analytics web apps often do this practice. In a way, you can almost think of it as a way Google knows that you are using these programs which does factor into real popularity. Sure, the method they are doing looks bad but it works. I would report them if it has any impact on your business.
If they've gotten to the point where they have managed to get PR8 via blackhat SEO than perhaps Google won't detect them without somebody actually pointing it out to them
Ok guys, If you type on search "online english movie" And you will see all the new movies online which are illegal. Still google give them PR and traffic, aren`t they suppose to be banned?
web 2.0 makes it a lot harder to catch these sites because of how jQuery functions, quite a few sites now long with hidden content that includes links because they are dynamically shown on a user action with jQuery.
1st off all on every single sale of the themes they get links etc .would like to say a thing to you who started the thread if you keep on replying .you get banned from the forum mods.
to add check ability for the "display:none" CSS property will be overload to the googlebot because it will check for the css classes and css IDs and this functionality can be added also using jquery or any javascript code. so i think if it's not impossible to check display:none it will be so difficult to them and for they performance